The Quickening eBook

Whereupon one member of the group got up and addressed
himself to the door. It was Japheth Pettigrass;
and what he said was said to the starlit night outside.

“My Lord! that ther’ boy was lyin’
to me, after all! I didn’t believe hit
that night when he r’ared and took on so to me
and ’lowed to chunk me with a rock, and I don’t
want to believe hit now. But Lordy gracious!
hit do look mighty bad, with him a-buyin’ all
that outfit and loadin’ hit in his pappy’s
buggy; hit do, for shore!”

A half-hour later, Brother Japheth, trudging back
to Deer Trace on the pike, saw the light in the long-deserted
cabin back of the new foundry plant; saw this and
was overtaken at the Woodlawn gates by Thomas Jefferson
with Longfellow and the buggy. And he could not
well help observing that the buggy had been lightened
of its burden of household supplies.

Tom turned the horse over to William Henry Harrison
and went in to his belated dinner somberly reflective.
He was not sorry to find that his mother and father
had gone over to the manor-house. Solitude was
grateful at the moment; he was glad of the chance to
try to think himself uninterruptedly out of the snarl
of misunderstanding in which his impulsiveness had
entangled him.

The pointing of the thought was to see Ardea and have
it out with her at once. Reconsidered, it appeared
the part of prudence to wait a little. The muddiest
pool will settle if time and freedom from ill-judged
disturbance be given it. But we, who have known
Thomas Jefferson from his beginnings, may be sure
that it was the action-thought that triumphed. They
also serve who only stand and wait, was meaningless
comfort to him; and when he had finished his solitary
dinner and had changed his clothes, he strode across
the double lawns and rang the manor-house bell.

XXIV

THE UNDER-DEPTHS

The Deer Trace family and the two guests from Woodlawn
were in the music-room when Tom was admitted, with
Ardea at the piano playing war songs for the pleasuring
of her grandfather and the ex-artilleryman. Under
cover of the music, Tom slipped into the circle of
listeners and went to sit beside his mother.
There was a courteous hand-wave of welcome from Major
Dabney, but Miss Euphrasia seemed not to see him.
He saw and understood, and was obstinately impervious
to the chilling east wind in that quarter. It
was with Ardea that he must make his peace, and he
settled himself to wait for his opportunity.

It bade fair to be a long time coming. Ardea’s
repertoire was apparently inexhaustible, and at the
end of an added hour he began to suspect that she
knew what was in store for her and was willing to postpone
the afflictive moment. From the battle hymns
of the Confederacy to the militant revival melodies
best loved by Martha Gordon the transition was easy;
and from these she drifted through a Beethoven sonata
to Mozart, and from Mozart to Chopin.